


warm on a cold night

by shomarus



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 3
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 16:12:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14793728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shomarus/pseuds/shomarus
Summary: “You should tell me the story,” the wanderer asks, a lazy grin spreading over her face. “Don’t see a couple like you n’ Greta out there in the wastes no more.”Carol gives a sort of snort-laugh before shrugging. “People care more about survival than romance. Hierarchy of needs and all that.” She has a way with words, this smoothskin. A sort of aura about her, just makes you want to spill your life story to ‘em. It’s the kind of feeling that Carol hasn’t felt in a person, not for a long time. “There’s nothing much to tell, really. She just waltzed in here one day and that was it.”





	warm on a cold night

**Author's Note:**

> name taken from honne's warm on a cold night

“You should tell me the story,” the wanderer asks, a lazy grin spreading over her face. “Don’t see a couple like you n’ Greta out there in the wastes no more.”

Carol gives a sort of snort-laugh before shrugging. “People care more about survival than romance. Hierarchy of needs and all that.” She has a way with words, this smoothskin. A sort of aura about her, just makes you want to spill your life story to ‘em. It’s the kind of feeling that Carol hasn’t felt in a person, not for a long time. “There’s nothing much to tell, really. She just waltzed in here one day and that was it.”

“But surely there’s more to it then that?” She’s persistent, Carol will give her that much.

“Well,” Carol takes a dish rag out from under the counter and slaps it down with a plop. “Yes, there was. Not enough for me to think it warrants such a display of grandeur, but if you insist. Greta’s out on her smoke break, and I suppose I can spin words while I clean. So... fine, but don’t expect Shakespeare-levels of storytelling.”

The wanderer sits back in her chair, pops open one of the Nuka-Colas Greta had set out for her before she left. It’s been a while since Carol’s had anyone to tell stories to. When everyone knows everyone in Underworld, everything becomes dull and boring. Almost everything, Carol reminds herself.

 

“The first time Greta walked in unannounced, she’d been leading a group of refugee ghouls. Must have been taking shelter from the Brotherhood of Steel folks up on the surface, but I wouldn’t know. Greta’s long forgotten them and I don’t have the heart to go looking for the answer.” Carol remembers it like it was yesterday. Comparing sixty-two years with two hundred and twenty-eight, it may as well have been.

It was her and three other people walking through those doors. Carol hadn’t been one of the greeters, but she had been the one to help patch up Greta. And console her when her friends died in medical care. And so on, so forth.

“It’s not your fault, you couldn’t have done anything to stop it,” Carol said with a whispery-sweet voice. The kind of hesitance that played upon unknowing. Only because  _ she  _ didn’t know any better either.

Greta wouldn’t have it. “Sure fuckin’ feels like it’d been my fault,” she muttered. She was still nursing a broken arm. Explosion, she’d said. “My friends died, hon. I can’t spell it out any clearer than that. Don’t see why I got to survive.”

“Nothing would have changed if you died as well, except for the fact that maybe everyone in Underworld would feel personally responsible.” Carol paused before offering up a lame smile. “And I’m glad that you’re here. It gives me something to do beyond polish the same spot of rotting wood.”

Greta sighed, dropped the subject then. “This is the dorms, then. Whaddya got in the way of food?”

“I don’t serve anything,” Carol admitted. “That’s more of Ahzrukhal’s deal. He’s a sleazy little man though. Suppose the only reason we haven’t thrown him out is because the hooch doesn’t give you stomach ulcers.”

“You should open your own place,” Greta suggested. “Get a few caps runnin’ through, and when I’m on the road again I’ll supply you with somethin’ better than that. Think of it as repayment for keeping me here.”

Carol frowned, “Oh, Greta, you don’t have t—”

“But I want to. It’s not like I’m going to be here for very long anyways.”

The conversation died there, but only because Carol didn’t want to admit that was why she didn’t want her to go.

 

The second time Greta had walked in unannounced was about a few months after she had set foot out of Underworld. Carol hadn’t been the first one to see her, but she had been the first one that Winthrop had told. She could remember how he winked at her, wondered how she hadn’t realized it back then.

“You’re back!” Carol said with jovial delight. “I’ve been wondering about you, and now you’re here!”

“The world works in mysterious ways,” Greta replied with a laugh. It’s the throaty laugh and the dry-skinned split smile that Carol had been waiting so long to feel again. “How’s the hotel been farin’ without me?”

“I can’t cook for shit,” Carol admitted. It was true—the squirrel stew she’d tried to concoct last night would have made better fodder for the glowing ones holed up in the Chop Shop rather than any sort of edible food. The squirrel stuck to the sides and the broth had coagulated into a jelly-like substance. Carol supposed that she’d overdone it on the fat. “But we  _ are  _ the most popular hotel in the entirety of Underworld.”

Greta caught the hint of humour that lingered on Carol’s voice, punched her jokingly on the shoulder for it. “You are the  _ only  _ hotel in the entirety of Underworld, my dear.”

“Fine, fine. How long are you staying here for this time?”

She usually only swung around for a month or two, and then she was out on the road again. Carol had grown used to the small bit of familiarity that Greta’s hectic schedule afforded her.

“As long as I’ve got the caps to afford a room, I suppose,” Greta replied, shrugging.

Oh, no no no. That wouldn’t do, to have Greta have to pay for a bed like the rest of the ghouls who went and gone. “You can stay for free, Greta. Don’t try to protest it, you’re my friend and my trusted business partner.”

There’s a small moment of hesitance on Greta’s part. Then, “Well, at least let me cook something better than the slop you’ve been serving.”

“Sure. But if I may ask, what happened? Why the sudden shift of interest?”

Greta didn’t reply for a long time. Gave another shrug, a look of indifference. “Don’t much have the mind for adventuring no more.”

Carol could only hardly contain her excitement.

 

Greta was starting to look distant and sick. Everybody noticed but nobody commented on it, half because to invoke Greta’s wrath was to invoke the anger of a demon itself, and half because the entire atmosphere was already so fragile. To make it even more depressing would have sent Carol into madness.

“I’m taking a smoke,” Greta mumbled, pushing past Carol and going towards the door.

“I’ll come with you.”

“You don’t smoke.”

Carol wondered if it was possible to pull muscles that were a few centuries due for death. Her eyes rolled. “Yes, I don’t, but is it so wrong of me to want to talk with my friend for a little bit?”

“Customers.”

“Be real, Greta. We don’t get any customers before eight, and even then it’s just Doctor Barrows in his off time.”

Greta said nothing, then shrugged and left. Carol followed, confused and scared and perhaps a little worried. “Are you feeling alright, dear?”

The silence stretched just a little further before Greta conceded. “It’s… romantic troubles.”

“Nothing to be embarrassed of!” At least it wasn’t something worse than that. Although Carol couldn’t explain for the life of her where that little pinprick of unease came from (though she’d realize sixty years later that it wasn’t unease at all). “Is it Winthrop? Oh, don’t tell me.”

“... No,” Greta replied cautiously. “Not Winthrop. I dunno, I’ve just been thinking about ‘em ever since I came back… Actually, they’re the reason why I came back. But I can’t just— _ tell  _ them that. I don’t even think they know.”

Carol didn’t really understand. Couldn’t relate at all. Between caring for the ghouls of Underworld and taking care of Carol’s Place, any time she might have had to set aside for matters of the romantic sort simply didn’t exist. “Maybe they’re not worth the time.”

“How do you figure?” Greta retorted with no small hint of annoyance. “The fuck do you mean, ‘not worth the time’?”

It must have sounded bad. Like all the most vile feelings and thoughts and worries combined into a single image. Carol understood that much, but there was something in Carol that urged her to keep going. “If this person makes you so upset, then perhaps it’s better to use your head? Don’t let yourself get so upset…”

“Have you ever been in love?” Greta asked, angrily. Carol’s mouth opened, though Greta cut her off. “No, don’t you sputter at me. Have you? Loved someone to the point of madness, where you can’t stop thinking about them?”

There were words. There had been words.

“I have, and I can’t stop thinking about you.”

Carol couldn’t speak.

“And I can’t—to tell me to stop and to use my fuckin’ head… I’d tell you to fuck off. But I don’t have those words in me for a gal like you.”

And then she got up. Started walking away. Carol bolted up just a second too late, clumsily reaching for the threads of Greta’s skirt. “Greta—”

“No, Carol. It’s fine.”

And then she was gone.

 

Gone, though not forever. Greta came crawling back, a bloodied mess. Carol might have been imagining things wrong, but when someone comes to you on the ground, with their liquids pooling out of them, then you’d forgive Carol for overreacting.

“Holy—Fuck, fuck, you’re alright, oh my god.”

“Clearly not,” Greta said with a grimace, but sarcasm was good. Sarcasm meant that Greta felt enough in order to make witty remarks, and selfishly, Carol thought, Greta was still Greta. “Get me to Barrows.”

“Yes, of course, I…” She didn’t want to leave Greta alone just before the entrance. Thankfully, Willow burst through the doors, an uncharacteristically frantic look on her face. Carol turned her attentions onto her. “Willow, get Doctor Barrows. Please.”

While Willow ran off, barely a word uttered between them, Greta croaked a throaty laugh. “Look at you, growin’ a spine while I’m away.”

“Don’t joke, please. You’re going to give me a heart attack, waltzing through the place looking like that.” The blood oozed through Carol’s fingers.

 

“And that was that,” Carol says with a distant grin. “It’s an uncommon love story, I think. Greta and I, we’re rather different in terms of personalities.”

“But it works for you,” the wanderer says, her own dreamy little smile etched onto the corners of her face. “Wow. Quite the romantic. I think the place is warmer with the two of you running the place, anyway.”

The grin on Carol’s face becomes closer to reality, a small smile stretched wide. “Yeah. She keeps me warm on cold nights.”


End file.
